


Chains

by Aly_H



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Wanderers, Drabble, M/M, Past Injury, Past Torture, Tal-Vashoth Iron Bull, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:24:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aly_H/pseuds/Aly_H
Summary: The Iron Bull and Haleir are hunting for a relic and Bull gets a little lost in his thoughts.---Tumblr Prompt: Relic, Wild, Chest.





	Chains

**Author's Note:**

> It's actually Saturday for me now but I'm cheating since I'm being a night owl anyways. XD
> 
> Written for the Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle.

The Iron Bull closed his good eye for a long moment, listening to the sound of the wilds around them. These mountain forests were nearly as full of life as the jungles of Seheron. Nearly as dangerous.

No striped cats prowled these shadows waiting to strike the unwary but they had dull-coated cousins that prowled these wilds. And great bears that outstripped the dangerous beasts of Seheron for pure size – and matched them in unruly temperament.

“Bull?” the voice came from just above him on the ridge, he opened his eye to look up and see his kadan peering over the edge to him. “The rope’s secured, you sure you don’t want to just wait while I fetch the relic?"

He huffed a laugh, reaching up to catch the rope lowered to him. Haleir had gotten to the ledge with a boost by standing on Bull’s shoulders. There were not enough handholds and footholds lower down to make climbing it feasible.

“Rather not have you wandering cursed caves on your own, kadan.”

“Scared of what my brother would do if he found out?” Haleir’s grin spread with that wild, mischievous light that so often got mistaken for unruliness by others.

Truthfully _anyone_ with sense would fear what Taralyn Lavellan, Lord Inquisitor, might do to a person who let his beloved twin brother waltz into a cave supposedly infested with ghosts on his own in pursuit of an artifact. However the Iron Bull’s primary concern in this instance was more his understanding of how dangerous poking for such artifacts could truly be.

Haleir’s body was a patchwork testament to the perils of such adventures. He had spent ten long years wandering Thedas – often alone – in pursuit of lost knowledge that he could return to his people. Years about which Hal had had no one to speak to.

A grimace had come when his fingers had brushed along the deep scar on his abdomen. The one that had to have been too close to killing him. _Templar figured I was an apostate – didn’t want the paperwork of a body so he left me to bleed in the alley. Cadash found me and got me to a healer._

Hal had flinched the first time the Iron Bull had took his right hand and carefully examined each scar upon it. His larger fingers feeling the scars where a surgeon had cut to be sure the bones were broken back to where they belonged after someone had broken them and allowed them to heal improperly. Mage-healing left only faint scars, easy enough to hide on a man whose fingers were rarely still, but they were there. _Crows thought I knew where Laurencio was hiding. They didn’t like my answers. Having the hand healed properly was worse, even with all the potions._

He understood why Haleir would take such a dangerous life. He’d had Dalish in the Chargers long enough to know that those elves who volunteered to walk away from their Clans, the ones with the wry smiles and “ _My Keeper thought I should see the world_ ” were not always the exiles they claimed to be. Spies, treasure-hunters, thieves. They were the ones stealing back what precious crumbs of knowledge of their lost homeland and people they could.

Haleir had left Clan Lavellan to become a Wanderer with his vallaslin barely healed. Young enough that at his age Hal would never truly pass as a _proper_ Dalish again. Even with brother and sister so close in the Inquisition it was impossible for Hal to close the distance there entirely.

The Iron Bull also knew the cost of being a spy. The sense of being alone in a foreign land with little or no contact with the people you once knew. To feel a stranger to your own skin in their company after years of being someone else entirely around everyone you had met.

  _Hal Lynn. The Iron Bull. Haleir Lavellan. Hisraad._

His Kadan helped him pull himself up to the ledge that the mouth of the cave opened up to and he frowned at the inky blackness. There was almost certainly going to be some kind of demon shit in a place like that.

“Scared, vhenan?” Hal asked, he was grinning but the question wasn’t meant to tease – not entirely anyways.

The elf’s dragon tooth pendant hung in the open on his chest beside the Dirthamen raven pendant. Two different chains but entangled with one another. Fitting.

“I pick the date next time, kadan.”


End file.
